Dragon's Egg Read online

  Dragon’s Egg

  by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Copyright © 2016 Emily Martha Sorensen

  Cover art by Eva Urbaníková

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Eggs

  Chapter 2: Evaluation

  Chapter 3: Experience

  Chapter 4: Essence

  Chapter 5: Element

  Chapter 6: Entrance

  Chapter 7: Excuse

  Chapter 8: Engaged

  Chapter 9: Eavesdropping

  Chapter 10: Effrontery

  Chapter 11: Everything

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  Chapter 1: Eggs

  Rose twisted her finger through her long, piled-up hair, crumpled her hat in her hand, and stepped into the dragon wing of the Museum of Natural History, her favorite place in the whole city.

  She hoped the trilobites and dragon claws would help her get up the nerve to talk to Papa. He hadn’t exactly been receptive when she’d mentioned fossils before.

  “Hello, Miss Palmer,” Mr. Teedle greeted her. He was the curator of the dragon collection, and he knew her well. “Back again?”

  “Yes.” Rose hesitated. “I’m going to tell my father today.”

  “You don’t need his permission!” Mr. Teedle said encouragingly. “It’s not the nineteenth century anymore. It’s 1920. Women have been paleontologists for over a hundred years!”

  “I wish he understood that,” Rose said, shaking her head. “I do need his permission to study geology. He pays my tuition and housing.”

  “I suppose he thinks you should simply get married?” Mr. Teedle asked with exasperation.

  “No . . .” Rose hesitated. “It’s my mother who’d like to see that. It’s just that he thinks a woman’s work is in the classroom.”

  Mr. Teedle shook his head and sighed heavily. Then he brightened. “Come see what we just brought in! It’s astonishing!”

  Rose followed him further into the room, her fears evaporating in the familiar place. A dragon’s skull hung on the wall, enormous horns protruding from its head and nose. The right horn was broken, with fractures running all down it. She passed a glass case against the wall that was filled with rocks imprinted by dragon claws.

  They were coming up on her favorite exhibit: two stones scorched by dragon fire, a rare treasure. There were only a few dozen around the world, and it was thought that they might represent some kind of writing system, given that the patterns seemed highly precise, yet irregular. It was hoped that these stones, or those like them, would be the key to uncovering what dragon fire had been used for, which might in turn be a clue to whether there were dragon species that had been intelligent.

  It was the unanswered questions that Rose found the most fascinating. She itched to find the answers to them. She craved the thrill of discovery, and longed for the long hours of careful puzzle-solving. She envied even the assistants who did nothing but brush dirt off fossils, day after day. To be that close to newly-discovered fossils, to touch them daily, would be a dream.

  And dragon fire was one of the most puzzling questions in paleontology. Nearly as puzzling as the question of whether any dragon species had been intelligent. Rose dreamed of being the one to find the answers to them.

  “Here we are!” Mr. Teedle said proudly. “What do you think?”

  Rose shook herself out of her reverie.

  The glass case in the center of the room no longer held her favorite exhibit.

  “Dragon eggs?” Rose asked, trying to hide her dismay. “What happened to the dragon fire stones?”

  “On loan to The Academy of Natural Sciences,” Mr. Teedle said. “These are our newest acquisition. They were uncovered in a hidden cave near the bone beds in Vernal. Aren’t they something?”

  Rose stared at the twelve eggs in the case. Whole dragon eggs were rare, though eggshell fragments were common. Twelve real ones found in one place would have been quite exciting. But these were clearly not real dragon eggs: they were dusky orange with brown spots. Real dragon eggs would be fossilized.

  “An artist’s recreation. How nice,” she said politely.

  “They’re not an artist’s recreation,” Mr. Teedle said excitedly. “They’re not calcified at all. We’re not sure what the shells are made of, as we haven’t been able to shave a piece off of any of them to test. They were found by the bones of adult Deinonychus antirrhopus dragons, and they match the shape of fossilized eggs we have found of the species. Aren’t they something?”

  Rose’s eyes widened. She stared at the eggs, riveted. “Are you quite certain they aren’t fakes?”

  “We haven’t been able to prove that they originated in the Mesozoic Era, so no, we can’t be certain. But the material they’re made from doesn’t seem to be one anyone is capable of fabricating.”

  “How do we know they’re dragon eggs?” Rose blurted out. “How do we know they’re not just . . . just some undiscovered reptile that lives in that part of the world?”

  “Excellent question,” Mr. Teedle said. “That’s a hypothesis that several people have put forth. But the prevailing theory currently is that these are Deinonychus antirrhopus eggs, somehow preserved by a mechanism we don’t understand.”

  “They should be decayed by now,” Rose breathed. “They should be impossible.”

  “Well, I certainly hope they’re possible, or else the museum has spent a lot of money on fakes,” Mr. Teedle chuckled.

  “How could the Dragon National Monument bear to part with these?” she blurted out. “Were they mad?”

  “They found hundreds, all in one place,” Mr. Teedle said. “The Smithsonian has bought six. The Field Museum of National History has bought eight. The Dragon National Monument has a clutch of sixty currently on display.”

  “Perhaps the species is still alive,” Rose murmured. “Is that possible?”

  “Who knows what’s possible?” Mr. Teedle asked with a smile, spreading his hands. “It’s an exciting time to be in paleontology.”

  Rose nodded emphatically.

  Another patron wandered into the room from the hallway. He wore a well-worn suit with a short jacket, and carrying a black fedora in his hand. His hair was oiled and slicked back, but still looked mussed, and he had no mustache, which made his face look bare. “Excuse me, is this the Hall of Ornithischian Dragons?” he asked.

  “Check the signs,” Mr. Teedle called back. “This is the Hall of Saurischian Dragons.”

  “Thank you,” the man said, turning to walk out of the room.

  A vision slammed into Rose’s mind.

  She was a tiny infant, crawling across the vast, dry landscape under a beating sun. She shivered, her whole lizardly body wriggling from head to tail. She stumbled forward, her tiny claws grasping for purchase, her tail sagging and sticky.

  She wriggled around and turned back, and found herself looking back at a broken eggshell, slathered with a trail of goop after her. She smacked the dry ground with her claw and looked up, terrified.

  There, high above her, were the comforting presence of her parents. She knew their minds, and their faces from what they had shown her. She opened her mouth and let out a small, shrill cry, and her mother reached out a claw and gently removed a sliver of shell that was trapping her tail.

  Stumbling forward again, she at last collapsed in a heap, and her father carefully reached down to pluck her up. In the sizzling warmth of his palm, she let out a soft sigh and dozed off to sleep.

  Rose gasped and returned to being human, standing in the Hall of Saurischian Dragons, right outside the case full of dragon eggs.

  “Did you . . . did you . . .?” she stumbled.

  “Yes,” Mr. Teedle said, his eyes huge and his forehead sweaty. He ran his hand down the slick surface of his
greying hair, over and over again.

  “I saw it, too,” the stranger said. He walked toward them and the case. “In the hot sun, slithering forward . . .”

  “… but I felt cold,” Rose finished for him.

  “My tail felt sagging and sticky . . .” Mr. Teedle whispered.

  “… until my mother pulled the eggshell off me,” the stranger finished.

  They all stared at each other.

  “It wasn’t my memory,” the stranger said. “I’ve never hatched from an egg.”

  For some reason, that struck Rose as funny. She started giggling.

  The stranger’s eyes fell on the display right beside them. “Those eggs,” he said. “Is one of those eggs alive?”

  Rose fell silent. Her heart hammered. The blood rushed to her ears.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Teedle said. He hesitated. “At least . . . we don’t think . . .”

  They all stared at the display case. The twelve matching eggs did nothing.

  Chapter 2: Evaluation

  “One of those eggs is alive,” the stranger said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “How can you be sure?” Rose asked skeptically.

  “Those things look alive. The skeletons don’t.” The stranger waved his hand around to indicate the rest of the room. “Besides, the vision was about hatching. Where else could it have come from?”

  “That’s not particularly sound reasoning,” Mr. Teedle said. “But it’s a valid hypothesis. These are the newest addition to the room, and nothing else like that has ever happened before.”

  “This implies that there might be living Deinonychus antirrhopus in Vernal,” Rose breathed. “Imagine what we could learn from a fertile egg.”

  “There can’t be dragons still alive,” the stranger objected. “People would have found evidence of it by now.”

  “What do you think this is?” Mr. Teedle asked.

  “I think it’s an egg that’s survived for millions of years. Hibernating or something.”

  “How could an egg survive for millions of years?” Rose asked skeptically.

  “How could a dragon breathe out fire without self-injury?” Mr. Teedle shrugged. “How could a dragon even produce it? There are still many unanswered questions about them. Almost anything is possible.”

  “But this means we will be able to find out the answers,” Rose breathed. “With a live dragon . . .”

  “Assuming the assumption is correct, I can hardly wait to study it,” Mr. Teedle said gleefully. “We’ll have to set up a laboratory on the facilities . . .”

  “Hang on,” the stranger objected. “If this is a live animal, it doesn’t belong in a museum. It belongs in a zoo.”

  “I imagine there could be a collaborative project,” Rose said, waving her hand carelessly. “Every scientist worth their salt will want to study it.”

  “Imagine what this will do for the museum,” Mr. Teedle said, his eyes shining. “Imagine the prestige. Imagine the number of visitors. Imagine how many fresh expeditions this will finance.”

  “Imagine that this is a living creature that should have some say in where it’s going to live!” the stranger shouted.

  “The eggs are the property of the museum,” Rose said. “I’m sure a great deal of care will be made to make proper arrangements.”

  “Actually, the young man has a point,” Mr. Teedle said solemnly. “We don’t know how intelligent Deinonychus dragons were, but there’s a great deal of evidence that they may have been as intelligent as apes. Perhaps even as intelligent as humans.”

  Rose felt a thrill down her spine. There’d be an answer to that question, at long last. Someone would be able to assess the behavior of a living specimen and evaluate it. Would she have a chance of being involved in the project? Even as an observer?

  “Intelligent as humans?” The stranger stared at both of them, slack-jawed. “Then this isn’t an animal we’re talking about at all. This is a child. A baby!”

  Mr. Teedle looked troubled.

  Rose wasn’t sure if she should keep arguing her point, but the concern was valid, and it was worrying.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We have to proceed on the assumption that it might be. It’s silly, but harmless, to treat an animal like a person. It’s potentially very harmful to treat a person like an animal.”

  “But it would not be very practical to proceed that way,” Mr. Teedle said, rubbing his oiled hair. “The egg is, as you mentioned, the property of the museum. It might be as intelligent as humans, but it won’t have the legal rights.”

  “If it’s a person, then it needs to get legal rights,” Rose said. “The sooner, the better.”

  The stranger smiled at her. “What’s your name, Miss . . .?”

  “Rose Palmer,” Rose said. “I’m a student at Hunter College.”

  “Henry Wainscott. I’m a student at City College.”

  The men-only college with the gorgeous Gothic architecture? Rose thought. She envied him. The academic standards of his school were probably far more rigorous than her women-only college.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wainscott,” she said formally, holding out her hand.

  He shook it.

  “So we have a plan, then,” Rose said briskly. “Assuming that the egg is alive, and assuming that it was the source of the vision we saw, we shall assume it is intelligent unless proven otherwise. We should probably speak with the director of the museum and see what protections can be applied right away.”

  She said that with a hint of hope, because she had wanted to meet the director for a long time. She knew nothing about him save what Mr. Teedle had mentioned: that he was a busy man who rarely ventured out into the museum during the hours it was open. It would be an honor to become acquainted with him.

  “No, it won’t do,” Mr. Teedle broke in, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s all very well to say that, but the egg is the property of the museum, and we paid a great deal of money to acquire it.”

  “You paid for twelve eggs, didn’t you?” Henry demanded, jabbing his finger at the exhibit. “Look! You’ll still have eleven!”

  “And lose the most valuable artifact this museum has ever acquired? I’m sorry, but the director would not stand for that. Neither would I, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s not an artifact, it’s a baby dragon!” Henry shouted. “Stop thinking about what’s good for the museum, and think about what’s good for the child!”

  He was saying child now, Rose noted. As if it were an absolute certainty.

  “There’s a simple way to resolve this dispute,” Rose said firmly, taking a step forward as if to curtail the altercation by inserting herself between them. “We ask the egg if it is intelligent, and if there is anything it wants. Perhaps it can communicate more clearly than it has already.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Henry demanded.

  “And if it does?” Mr. Teedle asked.

  “Then we evaluate it from what it says. Perhaps the egg is intelligent. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps the egg is content to stay in the museum, or actually wishes to be here. That’s a possibility that neither of you seems to have considered.”

  The two men exchanged uneasy looks.

  “It can’t do any harm to try,” Mr. Teedle said.

  Henry walked over to the display case and knocked on the glass.

  “Mr. Wainscott!” Mr. Teedle said sharply.

  “Helloooooo,” Henry said loudly, paying the curator no heed. “Hello in there! Are you the one who sent us the vision? Are you one of the dragon eggs? We want to know what you want. Can you understand me?”

  A wave of memory and emotion bowled Rose over.

  Why hadn’t they answered before? He had given them his mother’s memory of hatching. Wasn’t it clear? He would give them one of his ancestors’ memories. His father had given it to him.

  It bubbled to the surface. It felt muted, like the original experience had been muffled by the interpretation of many minds.

  She was v
ery cramped and uncomfortable. Her legs felt powerful, but her neck was weak. Her mother and father had instructed her to strengthen her neck so that she could use the egg tooth to chip her way out, but she had been lazy.

  Suddenly, there was emptiness where the father had been. She thrashed and kicked and screamed out, but only the mother’s mind answered. She sunk into a deep despair. Cold filled her heart, her mind, her limbs. She fell asleep.

  After a long time, a new presence in her mind dawned. It was a new father, chosen by the mother to replace the one they had lost. Uncertainty gave way to relief, and she awakened fully. She worked to strengthen her neck and burst out of the egg at last.

  Rose drew a breath, but there was no time to think. Now there was a raw memory again, unfiltered from being passed through other minds.

  His parents had vanished. His parents had vanished! In terror and despair, he retreated to the special sleep his parents had shown him how to do in case they vanished.

  At some point, other minds came. Not his parents. He didn’t want them. He refused to wake up. They went away.

  There was movement. There were more minds. Sometimes many, mostly two minds at once. Every so often, he would wake up. But he never liked them, so he always went back to sleep.

  There were no minds at all for a very long time. The emptiness was so complete, consciousness faded entirely. All sense of time was lost.

  His mother’s mind was there.

  He jerked awake, disoriented, but it wasn’t her mind. It was good, though. Similar. Where was his father’s mind? He couldn’t hatch without them both. He wouldn’t! Maybe he would go back to sleep.

  There it was! His father’s mind! He exulted, waiting for the minds to greet him, but they didn’t. The father’s mind was going away. No!

  Didn’t they know he was here? He’d give them the memory of his mother’s hatching so they would understand.

  They didn’t answer. They didn’t answer. They didn’t answer. Why didn’t they answer?

  They had to stay. They had to raise him. Didn’t they know the rules?

  The memory ended, and Rose drew in a breath, gasping. Her heart was filled with terror, and her arms were shaking.